


Which would you choose- good or yourself?

by junebugtwin



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Soldiers, Death, Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kumori needs a hug, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Propaganda, SI/OC, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, War, Worldbuilding, adults kind of suck, some people get to have nice cool lives, sometimes survival is not very badass, unfortunately our main character is not one of those people, war: its not great folks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:22:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27721367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junebugtwin/pseuds/junebugtwin
Summary: It’s the middle of the war, and it’s just one of the hundreds of courier missions being performed at the time. And of course, while Konoha doesn’t exactly have the resources to give its low ranking genin teams proper equipment or training, there is a genuine hope that every team makes it back- for one thing they need all the people they can get, unprepared rookies or not- and secondly, well, no one likes dead kids.But at the same time, it’s a dangerous war, and they can’t exactly protect everyone can they? So some couriers just don’t make it back. That’s life. They performed their duty- made an honorable sacrifice. The Will Of Fire warmly takes them back to the heavens, even when their bodies are never found, buried rotting in some mass foreign grave.Which is why, when Team forty-three doesn’t return from their mission delivering information to an outpost near Iwa borders, no one is exactly surprised. Of course, everyone agrees tearfully about how horrid it is too loose such young and new children. And it was truly a horrible tragedy, all except for the part where one of them wasn’t dead.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	Which would you choose- good or yourself?

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ I was hit with sudden inspiration, and so here we are. Comment if you have any questions so far, or just if you liked the fic!

It’s the middle of the war, and it’s just one of the hundreds of courier missions being performed at the time. And of course, while Konoha doesn’t exactly have the resources to give its low ranking genin teams proper equipment or training, there is a genuine hope that every team makes it back- for one thing they need all the people they can get, unprepared rookies or not- and secondly, well, no one _likes_ dead kids.

But at the same time, it’s a dangerous war, and they can’t exactly protect everyone can they? So some couriers just don’t make it back. That’s life. They performed their duty- made an honorable sacrifice. The Will Of Fire warmly takes them back to the heavens, even when their bodies are never found, buried rotting in some mass foreign grave.

Which is why, when Team forty-three doesn’t return from their mission delivering information to an outpost near Iwa borders, no one is exactly surprised.

The harried secretary dealing with such low level missions frowns vaguely at the update- she’s not upset exactly, because how could she be, she’s been working this job for _seven_ years, and this sort of thing is pretty common- but still, team forty-three is comprised of two ten year olds, and eleven year old, and a Jonin commander so fresh he’s practically still green.

So she lets out a bone weary sigh, and shuffles the file back to its previous spot, and gives the team four more days before she officially declares them dead.

It’s a cloudy day, just on the edge of rain when the four funerals are held, a sad amount for just one day- though it seems these days, someone’s always in mourning.

Of course, everyone agrees tearfully about how horrid it is too loose such young and new children- Nozomu Aoki and Kumori Kimura were both ten, Sora Hagiwara had been eleven, and even their sensei, Sutekina Nagao had only been twenty.

It was truly a horrible tragedy, all except for the part where one of them wasn’t dead.

\---

Kumori doesn’t expect to wake up, not even in the afterlife. She never really sat down and thought about it, but she’d always assumed it was fake- something about the way her Oba-san had always talked about it had tipped her off- mainly that she always spoke about heaven in the same frantically pained optimistic way she’d speak about her Oka-san coming back, or her To-san snapping out of his coma.

She’d considered telling her Oba-san that the doctor said most people don’t just ‘snap out of’ coma’s, but she also didn’t want her crying more, so she’d never brought that up.

Anyway, considering all that, it’s a real shock when she does- wake up, that is.

Kumori awakens to a deep feeling of cold that penetrates her body and numbs her toes- it’s everywhere all over her all at once, intense enough that she imagines little icicles hanging off her eyelashes and snow covering her tummy.

She realizes she’s wet too after a moment, and is just aware enough to be alarmed at that- Oba-san said if you went into cold water for more than five minutes you’d _die_ _instantly_.

Not especially inclined to die instantly, Kumori shifts clumsily, her limbs not responding very quickly or accurately to her commands- attempting to remove herself from the source of wetness- which is mainly concentrated on her lower body.

She realizes she’s in mud when pushing herself forward nearly sinks her arm up to her shoulders in squishy-squashy muck- and she shivers at the sensation of ice cold dirty sludge slipping between her fingers.

She momentarily wonders why she’s in mud- after all, the last thing she remembered was being on dry land- well, _bridge_ , which was dry enough. 

But as puzzling as that is, she’s honestly more curious as to how she’s actually alive- Kumori’s been on two teams counting this one, albeit, neither of them lasting very long- she’s seen plenty of people die, she knows when happens when genin like her fight the kind of people she’d been forced to fight.

Real ninja almost never mess up- they don’t fail, they don’t die, and mostly, they don’t let people go- even if they _are_ little kids and even if they beg. Not that she begged- she would have if she’d thought it’d work, but her priorities had been on other things at the time. Like not dying! Which apparently she succeeded at?

Satisfied with the amount of distance she’d gained from the water, Kumori blearily opens her eyes, wincing at the brightness of the sky, despite its incessant cloud cover. Carefully, she pulls herself up and looks around, listening closely for any sounds of danger as she does.

She’s still clearly in Iwa, not that she really expected otherwise. She’s in some sort of mud valley, surrounded by steep rocks and cold grey mountains she’s come to kinda hate. At the center of the depression she’s in, there’s a somewhat big stream, and it occurs to her that it’s probably what saved her life.

One of those Iwa-nin probably knocked her into the water and didn’t bother to check if she survived, which is careless and a bit stupid, but also really, really good for her!

Waiting a moment, Kumori leads a small amount of her chakra from her core to her ears- using as little as possible to prevent blowing out her hearing like last time.

She can hear the gurgling of the river, the sound of little lizard feet over rocks a bit to her left, and birds distantly in the air- oh, and of course, the wind- it was always windy over here though! It got annoying actually, and this was coming from a girl who’d loved windy days before.

Satisfied that she wasn’t about to be ambushed, Kumori, sighed and begun to gingerly check for injuries. Luckily, nothing seemed to be life threatening.

The cut on her shoulder had opened up again at one point, evidenced by the drying red covering that side of her shirt- but currently it was only sluggishly bleeding, which was really good cus’ she’d heard blood-loss really sucked!

Other than that she was just really bruised- badly in some areas like, her stomach- which she didn’t remember hurting, so she must have bumped up against a rock while she was being carried by the river or something. A really, really _hard_ mean rock- her stomach was completely black and blue and hurt to even think about.

None of it was pleasant- her cut still stung annoyingly anytime she so much as twitched her shoulder, and her various bruises throbbed rhythmically with pain- but considering Sutekina-sensei and her new teammates were dead it was a small burden.

It could be worse, she thinks, her hands squeezing the mud as her vision fills with the image of her Sensei’s head being separated from his body- blood showering her from head to toe, getting in her eyes and nose and mouth and burning like fire- the sick ‘thunk’ of her teacher’s head hitting the ground or the gruesome snap of his spine as it was crushed by the force of the blade.

Kumori takes a shaky breath in, aware that she’s doing exactly what she’s not supposed to in this scenario- Nagata-sensei’s stern voice fills her head, shaking his head grimly, muttering about ‘situational awareness’ and ‘trauma-techniques’- and she yanks a strand of her own messy brown hair, pretending it’s him, that she’s still at the academy and he’s giving her twenty laps for insubordination and ‘messy thinking’.

She used to hate him- hate his stupid beard, and his stupid mustache, and the stupid limbs he was missing that forced him to teach her stupid class- hated how he never let up on poor Konya-kun (dead) or let shy Sugai-chan (dead) finish her stuttering sentences, how he practically bullied little Tanaka-chan (also dead) into cutting that long hair that she loved so much-

She’d always told To-san he was the worst person she’d ever met, and right now she’d give anything to be in his classroom again, humiliated to tears in front of her entire class.

Kumori pulls on a strand of her hair particularly harshly, and lets out a small yelp as she tugs a piece out, practically falling over from her seated position from the momentum.

Shakily, she stares down at the dirty bay colored hair in her too-pale hands, counting the strands in-between the baby-fat and on top of the scars.

She manages to count to thirty before she’s finally calmed down enough, tossing the ripped off hair into the stream as thanks to whatever nice spirit that lived there that had been kind enough to save her.

“Thank you” She whispers, in the middle of enemy territory, covered in sweat and tears and multiple people’s blood. (Needless to say, she doesn’t feel very thankful, but she’d hate to come off as rude)


End file.
